Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

CHAPTER 15

KEYWORD MARKETING

Nearly all businesses have been impacted by the consumer habit of researching online before making virtually any purchase or major decision. Customers are researching online more now than ever before.

How can you get in front of these online prospects?

In order to attract the types of prospects that your business needs you'll need to know your keywords. While I won't go into all the technical details in one chapter, I can give you 90 percent of what you'll ever need to know about identifying the keywords that your prospects are using to try to find you. Once you know these keywords you are better equipped to do what it takes to make sure you or your business comes up online as being related to these keywords.

Knowing your keywords isn't enough, nor is it enough to just stuff your top keywords all over your website. Make no mistake in thinking this is a simple process, nor is it a process that you can take the write-a-check approach with to make it go away. Having a top-rated website that consistently appears high in the natural search engine results is a matter of ongoing commitment to relevance, incoming links, and steady content development.

The keywords associated with your business are the words that potential prospects are using to search Google or other search engines as they begin to research a buying decision that will eventually (hopefully) lead them to you. Odds are you already know instinctively what many of these keywords are, but inevitably ...